


Stayin' Alive

by Subtlemagic



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Community: zombi_fic_ation, Gen, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-09 10:24:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Subtlemagic/pseuds/Subtlemagic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Jim, the affliction ensured that boredom was now all there was going to be left. One person had to be able to stop it. It didn’t matter who.</p>
<p>For Zombi-fic-ation: Sherlock (BBC) - Jim - The hardest thing about the zombie apocalypse, and seeing the fall of civilization, is not dying of boredom now that there's nothing left to play with and nothing he can do to top that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stayin' Alive

That damned ringtone, ‘Well’ Jim thought to himself, ‘I suppose everything is damned now.’

Staying alive; the eternal problem, the one thing he had thought he had found a solution to: the taste of cold hard steel on a windy rooftop. Now he didn’t even have that. 

It was all so _dull_. He didn’t even have the satisfaction of knowing that he had caused the death of one Sherlock Holmes. Somehow the man had managed to not just come back from the dead, but actually to be alive. He, unlike Jim himself, had escaped the virus.

It was pissing irritating.

Jim had thought about trying to kill himself again, just so that if he was unable to make the world burn due to his… _condition_ at least he would have been able to avoid watching something else do it.

However such things weren’t as possible as he had once hoped, any of the normal means of dispatch were ineffective against the hoards, as some unfortunates had found out. The only thing that seemed to truly work was decapitation and subsequent destruction by fire. The government (or what was left of it) had made legislation separating the ‘undead’ from the ‘true undead’ claiming that consciousness that some undead still had in the early stages of the infection didn’t warrant immediate dispatch. Soon as you hit true undead though, it was no holds barred, it was legal for anyone and everyone to destroy them, as long as it’s effective. 

He watched the true undead with their brainless ways with mild interest and repulsion. He had always thought the common man so vile in its acceptance of the mundane and obsession with feeding the mundane needs, but these creatures, they were worse. They had no instincts, no care, no thoughts and no intelligence but to feed, that he wished for normal humans and their petty problems with every fibre of his being.

He wasn’t sure how long it would be before he changed to one of those brainless things; his heart stopped a long time ago (one of the very first symptoms of affliction and blowing your own brains out apparently) but so far he hadn’t lost any of his memories, wit, or speech patterns. The world was so boring now, and until he hit the tertiary stage of the disease he would be unable to end it.

Staying alive would have been better than this.

If Jim was honest with himself the tertiary stage terrified him. He had very little in his life that he was scared of but the idea that he would _know_ , he would _feel_ himself being lost. He was fucking brilliant. He either wanted to be brilliant or dead. Everything else was too horrific for words.

He had come to the rooftop a lot since he had killed himself. He had been very good at not being seen by anyone, his somewhat unsuccessful death hadn’t changed that about him

It was even more boring than dealing with petty problems though. He didn’t even have Sherlock to toy with anymore. What was there in his life (or unlife) to destroy now? People couldn’t die.

Not what people did anymore he supposed.

He used to be so indifferent about death, it was fun, and it was an escape, it wasn’t this tragedy that and now that people weren’t dying, not really anyway. There was a solution, but no-one who would willingly rid him of this horror that was the secondary phase. It was rather difficult to decapitate ones’ self.

There were people working on a cure. The hope being that it might cure those in the primary, and perhaps even secondary phases of the change if the heart could be effectively restarted. The view was fairly unanimous though; the tertiary phase was the end. He only knew one person who was working towards an answer that could include the true undead.

He saw her from here sometimes, mousy as ever, infinitely adorable, and unfortunately for her, unless she had developed some measure of extreme anaemia, most definitely undead. That was going by pure observation of course, but he also knew from the daily update that she was one of the few sufferers of airborne affliction. Working so closely with the undead had meant that even though she wasn’t bitten, eventually she developed the primary stage symptoms and by law she had to submit her details to the local authority to allow a proper tab on numbers and progression who then in turn would submit the names to the general public for the inevitable moment that they would become tertiary.

She had always been an interesting character, so seemingly unimportant and boring, but there had been an underlying pain to her, as though, despite her unrelenting optimism, she had suffered greatly during her life.

She had been easy to puppeteer before, he wouldn’t be surprised if he could do it again. If there was one person who would want to dispatch him personally then Molly Hooper would be it.

He would have thought that the threat of true undead would have made security in the hospitals much tighter, but apparently now that the affliction had become pandemic people simply didn’t care anymore. Or maybe Jim, even when undead, was still leagues ahead of the minds of ordinary people. Personally he was willing to believe the latter.

Molly didn’t even flinch when he walked into the room. She was cold and calm waiting for the plan, the reveal, to understand what he wanted.

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t axe you now, right now.” She eventually said, the harsh words sounding discordant with her gentle tone.

“Would you really be able to do it?” Jim asked, he hadn’t even managed to say hello to her, he just walked towards her as she sat in the morgue with a dangerous gleam in her eye. “You know, with people not dying I’m surprised you still have a job.”

“People die temporarily, if it’s due to anything but the affliction.” She informs him, “for about three days before they start the secondary phase. There needs to be somewhere that they can be stored during that time, it also gives me the opportunity to study and analyse the virus; make a cure.”

“Don’t they have thousands of people in high tec labs working on the cure? Why would you waste your time, you’re not going to manage it before them, even if they’re not looking at the tertiary.”

“Perhaps not,” she said, “But you’re as far along as I am, I doubt you want to sit idly by and watch your own brain get devoured by this thing. Do you?”

“I just want someone to dispatch me before I defeat the odds by permanently dying of boredom.”

“Well you’re just going to have to wait it out like the rest of us. You’re protected by law, as am I, and unless you’re the most lucid tertiary I’ve ever met, dispatching you, most definitely would be murder.”

“I didn’t take you as one who cared for that sort of thing.” Jim insisted, “Especially after the way I used you. Intentionally and without regret might I add.” He could toy with her, play with her emotions. She wouldn’t be the kind to destroy him out of pure anger, but he could mess with her thoughts.

“I don’t think you know how _not_ to use people. This may surprise you, but I didn’t take it personally. I saw how tired you were, I can’t hate someone who feels that way.”

Jim didn’t quite know what to say to that, he knew Molly noticed some things about him during their brief affair, but he was equally aware that she studiously ignored everything that didn’t fit into her fantasy. She had spent so long pandering to great minds that she couldn’t help but hope to be the greater mind in their relationship.

“You’re tired too Molly, I think that’s fairly plain to see.”

Her smile was pallid, obviously she had taken to wearing gentle red makeup on her lips and cheeks to make it look as though her heart was still beating, but even from a distance it was obvious that she wasn’t _just_ pale and interesting.

“But you’ve always been tired, Jim, you are more world-weary than any other man I’ve met. Remember those tired eyes that Sherlock said you had? Your eyes still look tired to me, even though they shouldn’t.”

“I’ve had time to get used to the tiredness, what about you?” he said brushing a gentle thumb under her eyes and watching her flinch with some strange satisfaction. “You don’t even bother trying to cover it up anymore.”

“Surprisingly they don’t make concealer in ash white.” She spat pulling back sharply from his soft touch.

“I think it’s a real missed opportunity, some company stands to make millions.”

Molly didn’t reply, she just stood there arms folded protectively in front of her chest. 

“Well,” he said eventually breaking the silence, “I better be off,” leaning down to her level he placed the softest of kisses on her cold cheek, if he had been alive he would have felt his heart flutter, for just the tiniest of moments, but he didn’t. It was a good thing too, he might have vaguely admired the young doctor but he definitely didn’t value any feeling beyond pure cold calculation.

“Good luck with your cure Miss Hooper. I look forward to the day when we both aren’t tired anymore.”

He walked slowly up the stairs and out into the brilliant sunlight, basking in it and how, before too long, the mundane would no longer be a problem.

The smile on his face spoke clearly of his understanding. He could hear the click of the heels, one inch kitten heels worn more on the outer edge and the left foot less heavy than the right. The sounds of someone carrying something heavy.

Glancing out of the corner of his eye he saw her following him and was thankful.

He wouldn’t need a cure.


End file.
